Exploring Paris

It was strange, but exciting to wake up this morning and to realize that I was in Paris! Today we visited Victor Hugo's mansion because he is one of my absolute favorite authors. He wrote Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. We also spent a lot of time wandering around shops, court yards, parks, and the river. It was very fun and relaxing.

Cafés in Paris have excellent coffee, but only in very small portions, so we went to McDonald's thinking that surly they'd have bigger cups of coffee... Nope :-).

 This is a panoramic picture that Dad took of Victor Hugo's mansion. The building just goes on and on!

This was one of my favorite sights, and we didn't even know that it was there until we stumbled upon it! It's a nursery that takes up several buildings and spills way out into the sidewalk. It has everything from trees and shrubs to bulbs and seeds. It also has perennials and indoor plants and everything you need to take care of everything with and to enhance your garden. The picture I took really doesn't begin to show how large or how beautiful it is. I hope to capture it better with pressed flowers someday.

The Parc des Buttes-Chaumont is a very large park and is very interesting to explore. We did a lot of walking there and saw gardens, tumbling water, a cave, a pond and a tall cliff, on top of which is a fancy gazebo, from which you can get a great view of Paris. We also saw lots of cute dogs, one of which reminded me a lot of my dog, two bunnies, a pony and parrots.

 I'm deeply bummed that I'm not allowed to bring home this hydrangea that we saw at the nursery.

Dad's favorite part of today: Standing by the pond and looking up at the cliff in the Park des Buttes-Chaumont.


My favorite part of today: Sitting outside in a café and hearing the waiter say, "Bon appétit," as he set big plates of beautiful food before us.